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Business Review 1996/1997
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Business Review 1996/1997
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International Technical Fora
During the last year, staff within the Space Services Unit have been involved in the work of a number of national, European and international groups. Much of this work has centered around the preparations for WRC-97, since its agenda contains a large number of items relating to the work of Space Services. RA staff have produced numerous contributions to the various groups resulting in several European Common Proposals (ECPs) to WRC-97 and also a number of new and revised ITU-R Recommendations.
Some key topics of relevance to the UK Space Service sector are highlighted below:
In the fixed Satellite area, the UK has contributed to WRC-97 related studies within ITU-R WP4A on sharing between the Inter-Satellite Service (ISS) and passive sensors at around 50 GHz, sharing between the FSS and ISS, sharing between the FSS and the earth exploration satellite service, and proposals to revise the reference radiation pattern envelopes assumed for both earth station and satellite antennas used in networks operating in FSS bands. Also the highly topical subject of NGSO FSS networks such as Teledesic sharing with GSO systems has been extensively studied.
Another important issue for the UK has been the feasibility of sharing between the proposed Teledesic FSS system and fixed links. The UK submitted several contributions to ITU-R Working Party 4-9S on the effect of interference and the limits required on non-GSO FSS systems.
In the Science Service area, two UK contributions on modelling techniques to be applied to large antennas for Radioastronomy and Space Research were approved by ITU-R Study Group 7 as Draft New Recommendations. The RA has also initiated a research study on the effects of spurious and out-of-band emissions on Radio Astronomy and spaceborne passive services. The results of this study will contribute to the ongoing work on this topic within the CEPT Spectrum Engineering (SE) Working Group and also feed into the work of ITU-R Task Group 1/5.
The UK has also contributed to work within the SE group on the development of a Monte Carlo methodology to facilitate sharing of the Radioastronomy allocations at 1610.6 -1613.8 MHz and 1660 - 1660.5 MHz with the Mobile Satellite Service. Other work within the SE Working Group included the preparation of a major submission to the ITU-R WP1A meeting in February 1997, proposing an update of Appendix 28 (Appendix S7) of the Radio Regulations concerning the method to determine the co-ordination area around an Earth-station. WP1A could not arrive at a consensus on the revision to Appendix S7 in time for WRC-97 and this has led to the ITU-R forming Task Group 1/6 to propose a revision to Appendix S7 in time for WRC-99. Agency staff will continue to be involved in this important topic which will affect the co-ordination of all space service earth stations including those of the FSS, Radioastronomy, Space Research, Space Operations and Earth Exploration-Satellite services.
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